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"There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion" Francis Bacon 1561-1626

Thursday, 14 February 2013

Seven More Feb Sketches & some Good News!

I am putting together a few sample “books'” to show on Sunday at Barnesdale for the Illustrated Garden Workshops. They are a bit rough and ready but more about ideas than anything else.

Here are more of of my sketches for the “What I saw in February” book. They are also my daily drawing practice. They are fun to do.

Old chard leaves gives some colour in the snowy garden. Birds are tossed on the sleety cold wind.

Vincas are flowering by the front door and fieldfares paid us a visit in the snow.

The wood pigeon pecks about under the birdfeeder, it sometimes rains seed from above and there was a slender waning moon the other night

And snowdrops, not mine but from Easton last year.. I will be there next week for the first time this year, for the snowdrop celebration and to meet up with the group. I can’t wait to get started again.

The full set, 14 pages, and made into a swatch book.

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Good News! Artist in Residence, Grafham Water

It’s always very nice to announce something on an auspicious day and what better day then Valentine’s Day. Starting officially in April, I will be “Artist in Residence” at Grafham Water for a year. A wonderful chance to do a body of work about this lovely area, hold painting and drawing workshops and get to know much more of the ins and outs of the reservoir and its surroundings. I will be keeping another blog to record progress…and… Ta da!… resurrecting “Leaf of the Day”.

I had decorated this paper today as cover paper for one of the books and decided to add a lino cut of 2 willow leaves in celebration and in eager anticipation of more leafy images. I loved doing the Leaf of the Day posts back in 2008. I look back and can’t quite believe I drew and researched so many plants. This time they will be a variety of techniques as I learn to become a hopefully competent printmaker and instead of the steamy paths of Leu Gardens in Florida, will be a record of cool leafy woodlands of middle England. I may not find anything as exotic as the dancing Telegraph Plant or the Midnight Horror Tree but it will be just as fascinating. So here as a prelude are two leaves of the lovely willows which line the water of the reservoir.